Whistling
by Poetic Devices
Summary: A collection of some sadder one-shots, post-httyd 2 (with implied spoilers).
1. Whistling

Hiccup was making himself dinner in the empty home. It had been two weeks since… it. That. The unspeakable event that had caused him to lay awake at night for hours with salty tears staining his cheeks and running down the sides of his face.

Now, in the quiet house, Hiccup was trying to get himself back to normal. Finding that his mother wasn't exactly the best cook he had taken it upon himself to make the food and keep himself healthy. It was the most he could do during a time like this. First it had just been grief. Then denial. Then more grief. Then quiet.

Today, he was attempting to get himself back under control. He was the chief now, wasn't he? So there he was, frying up a couple of fish in a pan over a smoking fire. As he sat and cooked, he thought of his dad. Not the recent memories… but the happier ones. The times just after the Red Death, when the island was at peace and his father had fully accepted him - as a Viking, and as a son. Without realizing what he was doing, Hiccup absentmindedly began to whistle. It was his parents' song. For the Dancing and the Dreaming. A sweet tune that lifted his heart a little as he continued to sit and watch the fire.

Valka found the door to the house open and assumed Hiccup must be home. She walked through the open door and into the house, treading lightly, in case her son was asleep upstairs. In a minute, she stopped in her tracks, listening in the hallway.

Whistling.

The tired woman's breath caught, and she edged towards the kitchen, where the whistling was coming from. It was their song. The one she and Stoick sang…. just before…

"Stoick?" She whispered to herself. She didn't even realize that she held a hand over her heart, and she peeked around the corner of the kitchen doorway.

….It was Hiccup. Now he was whistling away to the song that his own mother remembered so fondly.

Flipping over a fish in the pan, Hiccup was startled to find that he was crying. A few droplets dripped from the corners of his eyes and down to his nose and cheeks. He wiped them away with surprise. No. He didn't want to be crying again. Valka couldn't see his face from where she stood in secret, but she did hear the whistling stop. Please… she begged the boy in her mind, just let me hear it again…

Hiccup carefully took the pan off of the fire and put the fish on a plate, but he didn't touch it at all. Instead, he resumed the song - humming this time. He was too preoccupied to notice his mother, quietly listening in from the doorway. Then he started back at the beginning of the song, whistling again. Valka smiled as she pictured her husband whistling that tune to her. Just like he used to.

"You're more like your father than you know" she murmured softly, without her son hearing.

She would tell him later.

* * *

**_:::::::A/N::::::_**

I did say it was short. Hope it wasn't too boring, and thanks for reading!


	2. You Can Let It Out

**A/N**: Another sad post-httyd 2 drabble. **Spoilers**. Mild hicstrid. Possibly might need tissues if you're emotional like I am.

* * *

Hiccup was in the cove, the one where he had first met Toothless. He sat next to a moss-covered rock, camouflaged from sight for the most part. He was looking through his old journals and drawings, ones from years ago. He'd drawn these before his father even knew about him and Toothless, before he had known the truth about the dragons. But he'd gotten about five years to show his father and the rest of the village what they were really like. Just five years. Five short years.

He stared at one of his old sketches, the first sketch he had drawn of Toothless, with smudged charcoal where the second tailfin should be. He flipped to another sketch. Fin designs. Gobber had been going nuts when Hiccup wouldn't tell him about his secret project in his workshop. Of course, Hiccup couldn't have told anyone about it at the time.

His thoughts flashed forward to the day of the final exam. The incident in the kill ring with the monstrous nightmare. Toothless captured. His father _furious_.

_You're not a Viking... You're not my son._

His heart broke into pieces all over again thinking about it, just like it had when he sat up from the floor of the great hall, where his father had pushed him away and rejected him as his family. But then the memory fast-forwarded again, to the battle with the Red Death. He was soaked with seawater as he hopped on Toothless's back, ready to take flight. Just then he'd felt a firm, heavy hand on his own, small one. His father's hand.

_I'm sorry. F-for everything._

Oh, gods...

_You don't have to go up there._

But he _did_ have to.

_I'm proud... to call you my son._

What was the point of holding it all in? Hiccup covered his mouth with his hand and held it there. A few tears forced their way out, and he quickly swiped them away. He couldn't cry. It had been a week. One week. He couldn't lose it now.

* * *

Astrid found Hiccup at the cove. Toothless was nowhere to be found, and that worried her even more. When she got close enough to see Hiccup's face, she knew exactly what was going on.

"...Hiccup?" she asked softly. Hiccup's head snapped up.

"Oh! Hey... sorry, thought maybe you were someone else."

"Can I sit down?"

Hiccup gave a halfhearted nod, and Astrid sat.

"I never even got to say goodbye" he murmured. His voice held tears, but Hiccup had a very stoic face expression. He was holding it back.

"I... I'm sorry. I can leave-" Astrid made to stand up.

"-No." Hiccup quickly grabbed hold of her wrist - not roughly, but not too gently, either. He realized how desperate he appeared, for wanting her to stay. Then he realized he didn't care. He needed someone there with him - he was tired of sitting alone, moping to himself. "Just... yeah. You don't have to leave."

Astrid sighed, moving to sit closer next to Hiccup on the rock. "Are you feeling okay?"

This earned her a shrug from the other Viking. There was so little expression on his face, it made Astrid feel uneasy. Hiccup was never like this. But now he had a good excuse. Still, he shouldn't be so emotionless, it was unnecessary. She wondered if Hiccup was afraid to act sad in front of her, now that it had been a week and he was the new chief.

"You know, you don't have to be so _stoic_, Hiccup..." then she froze. She realized the weight of what she'd just said. Hiccup heard it, too. He shook his head, and Astrid became scared he would send her away. But all he said was,

"No... I do. I need to be... well, _not_ so emotional. Not when the tribe needs me."

"But you _don't _have to be _completely_ unfeeling._"_

"It's what a chief has to do, not be biased, not be emotional... It's how he has to be. A chief protects his own, Astrid, and I can't do that if I don't suck it up and deal with it."

"I think your mother would say differently."

"Why do _you _care what my mother has to say?"

The blonde Viking fell silent. Hiccup turned guiltily away.

"I'm... I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"I understand why you did. Hiccup... you don't need to bottle it up like you're doing."

"Well what am I _supposed_ to do?!" Hiccup let out a strangled cry, tearing at his hair and looking to the sky for an answer. The emotional agony leaked through his voice, and Astrid heard it all in the one sentence he'd uttered. She scooted closer to him on the rock they both sat on. Her arm wrapped around his shoulder. Hiccup let her hold him.

"Go ahead" she whispered gently. "You can let it out. Really. No one here is going to judge you... It's just me here."

At first, there was only silence. The young chief sat very still, stiff against Astrid's arm, facing away from the woman. Then, all at once, he broke down into quiet sobs sunk into the embrace. Astrid quietly cried with him. Hiccup's shoulders heaved up and down as he buried his face into Astrid's shoulder, which was covered by her fur hood that she always kept down. One of his arms hung limp at his side with a hand by his notebooks, the other arm he wrapped around the blonde's shoulder.

They sat like that for hours, until the young man's sobs turned to muffled but normal breathing. Until the last tear slid from his eyes. Until the grieving feeling numbed and Hiccup finally felt only the gentle comfort of the person next to him - nothing else.


	3. Could Have Saved Them

**Another sad one. Antag!Valka written to the request of writer justawanderingdragon. **

**_XXX::::XXX_**

She could hear the shouts of her son ringing out from behind the wall of ice.

"Toothless stop! _Please!"_

She didn't sprint like anyone's life depended on it, not like the man already yards ahead of her was doing. As the shouts of Stoick got closer to his son's desperate pleas, Valka slowed. She stopped. And she stood there.

She could save them. She had at least a good minute. She had time. Just enough to knock them both out of the way, and if need be, take that blow herself.

But she stood there.

She found herself a spectator, observing with an almost removed sort of mentality, like she wasn't really there, and there were no real risks to simply watching her long lost husband bolt towards their only son, backing up to the wall of ice until he had no place left to go.

Twenty seconds. She had maybe twenty seconds to intervene.

"Toothless, bud it's me... it's Hiccup. I-I'm right here! _Stop!_"

But what if she just…. did nothing? She was better off alone, living with the dragons, that much was true. And did her husband really, really care about her cause? She'd had twenty years of solitude with the creatures to know whose side she was on. And Stoick had had the same twenty years raising the one son she never got to know. Perhaps making such a sacrifice for either of them would do nothing at all. It would be forgotten quickly.

What if… What if they never saw dragons the way she did? Those two men on the other side of that icy wall, they were vikings; they would _never_ be like her. They would never carry out the mission that she had planned, to take down Bludvist, and then take the world with the dragons by her side.

Five seconds.

She stood and watched with distant eyes and a limp hold around her staff. Time was a messy blur to her.

One second.

"Dad, **_NO!_**

_PFOOOMMF!_

Ice flew everywhere.

Valka just barely restrained herself from lifting her hands to her ears. Her time was all run out. And she had made her choice.

When the smoke and steam cleared, the black dragon was still standing where it had been moments ago, panting, teeth bared, with a deranged look in his slitted eyes.

Before she even reached the pile of splintering ice, Valka knew exactly what had happened.

_We never would have been a real family again, anyway, S_he decided.

As she watched, a crumpled figure on the ground pushed itself up on its- _his_ arms. It was Hiccup.

After catching his breath his eyes were immediately on the fallen mass buried under ice and snow, a tangle of limbs and clothing and blood. If she hadn't already lost the last of her humanity, the woman who witnessed the look on that boy's face would have sobbed in agony. But she did not.

She turned around and began to walk away, staff in hand, ready to command a new army.


End file.
